With the 2024-25 school year rolling in, along with it comes Dublin Gaels Fall Sports! From the First Friday Night Lights to Dublin looking to hold their NCS D1 Boys Cross Country title, this fall season has a lot in store! Starting off with the New Look Gaels Football program:
The Gaels start a new year following a 5-5 season. Having recently replaced their head coach, Brandon Black (New Varsity H.C. for Granada), new coach and retired Raiders Running back Napoleon Kaufman hopes to improve from last season when a hot 3-0 record quickly fell to a 2-5 record over their next seven games, dropping them to the fourth spot in the East Bay Athletic League at a 1-3 league record. To this end, the Gaels are planning to take it game by game and finish with a positive record which may even allow them to top the East Bay Athletic League for the first time since 1978.
Dublin will be led by captain and star senior QB Jack Duncan, who ranked second in Passing Yards (1214 yds) last season and boasted an impressive 9:3 touchdown/interception ratio. The Gaels will also feature the senior wide receiver duo of Anthony Pickens and Ethan Kennedy, who will most likely receive more targets due to the departure of last year’s star senior Garret Esomonu. Switching to the other side of the field, Junior DB Cayden Bennet has gotten a lot of attention over the summer, and looks to better the Gaels’ defense which was seen to be struggling last season, unable to put up a single sack and struggling on their tackles as well as their interception ratio.
The first chance for many to see the new-looking Gaels under Coach Kaufman will be for their home opener on Friday, September 13th at 7:00 p.m. when they host Heritage. Be there or be square!
Now switching over to Dublin High School’s most defining sport, cross country, The Dublin Gaels emerge from an impressive season in which they were able to put themselves at the top of the D1 Boys North Coast section division among other top high school cross country programs such as Berkeley and Dougherty Valley. Their first appearance of the season will be at Hayward High School this Saturday to compete in the “Hayward High Scrimmage,” which will feature other teams scattered around the Bay such as Carondelet High, Mt. Eden High, Livermore High, Miramonte High, Pinole Valley High, and even Dublin’s newest High School, Emerald High School. The Hayward course, which was the same course Dublin was able to win the NCS D1 Title on, is known by many as one of the “faster” courses, allowing athletes to shatter their personal records and, most importantly, run fast.
The new year, too, brings significant changes to the composition of the Gaels’ team. Specifically, the boys’ cross country team saw the departures of star senior Aiden Stone, who is likely headed to run collegiate at the University of California, Davis. But, luckily for the Gaels, they are now led by promising upperclassmen, such as Tristan Gan, Kevin Pedregosa, Daniel Santhiapillai, Justin Feng, and star sophomore Lucas Lipman. Flipping the switch to the girl’s team, they are led by impressive senior Melia Prenton, who recently came off an amazing track season where she was able to shatter the 800m women’s school record of 2:24.55 (set back in 2016) and replace it with her 2:23.47 at last year’s NCS tri-valley championships.
The Dublin Gaels hope to have a successful 2024 cross country season, and we hope to see you in Hayward cheering on your fellow Gaels.
